Labtop Problem

[ROH]

hey guys

my mate has a thinkpad 365dx labtop and when he turns it on a picture of a lock comes up and when he presses buttons on the keyboard **** come up like entering a password, and he can't go any further then that.

any help on this would be greatly appreciated, thank you

[best4less]

Try removing the bios battery

[z80]

you will need to get advice from an ibm service center.
I think they will have a password service disk.
the password will be in flash, the cmos battery will unfortunately make no difference.

[ROH]

thanks for the replys guys, i will let him know

[best4less]

Hold f1 when you turn the machine on
See if that makes any difference
Maybe the hard drive is password protected

Have you tried bart pe disc or any other boot disc

good luck

[intelliGEORGE]

You are referring to the Supervisor password. These passwords reside on the Planar (Mother Board) CPU Card, in area of memory that by definition is not erased by power cycling or removing the batteries, or by changing the bios chip.

There is hardware (LPT1 Dongle) and software required to allow you to access the security chips & BIOS's on machines, without actually removing the chips of the board, (this is necessary with some of the IBM machines, as the chips have security on them to prevent tampering) this equipment is the only way to remove passwords on some of the newer IBM machines.

In some cases, when a Supervisor password is set, the Hard Disk password is also automatically set. In this case, you can sometimes remove the hard disk password as well, but in many cases it is easier and cheaper to replace the drive.

My advise would be to source a replacement HDD if indeed it is a HDD password otherwise if it is the supervisor password then you will need to source out the LPT1 dongle and software or take it in to someone who provides this service.

[Charm3d]

Yes it's true. A pass that is used in the bios settings is not able to be wiped by removal of the bios battery.
In most cases the bios chip needs to be removed and either replaced or taken back to then manufacturer to be reset.
There is nothing really that can be done to fix this problem.

[Charm3d]

Here have a look at these pages and let us kow if anything works for you:

[ROH]

thank you gentlemen, i will get back to you shortly

[Philquad]

i beg to differ
a "friend" had a found school lappy from dunno
pulled it apart, disconnected the bios battery for 30 minutes.
put it together, booted to xp cd, all good.
passwords gone

[z80]

Here is the secret info for breaking into a Toshiba notebook that has it's BIOS password enabled.

(It is stored in flash memory, no amount of battery discharge will help).


To make a simple device that you connect to your parallel port, most Toshiba computers remove the password when you boot it up if the loopback is fitted.

The device can be made out of any male DB25.

You should connect these pins: 1-5-10, 2-11, 3-17, 4-12, 6-16, 7-13, 8-14, 9-15, 18-25


I have built this device and keep it on the workbench where we rollout Toshiba Laptops.
Toshiba wanted $150 for another one so we just copied it.

For the models that don't have parallel ports we plug a port replicator in.

Other manufacturers use closely guarded Key disks that you boot from.



The days of cmos passwords are gone, especially with quality brands.
You will find that the flash password even locks the hard disk contents.
If the hard disk is fitted to another machine it still fails to work.
We have proven that the security chip is on the R/W head assembly, so even swapping the drive pcb doesn't work.

I am pretty sure IBM and Dell as well as HP use this security scheme as well.

[covert]

Just tried it on a HP omnibook I have had around the place for a while. It still had the bios password prompt up.

Then I thought I would try to guess it for the hell of it and decided to try first names....

You would not believe it. I got it first shot !

[ROH]

hey guys

my mates away for the weekend, he will try out what you have posted up on monday and i will get back to you on how he goes

thank you once again for your help its much appreciated

[urban_s0ulja]

Here is the secret info for breaking into a Toshiba notebook that has it's BIOS password enabled.

(It is stored in flash memory, no amount of battery discharge will help).


To make a simple device that you connect to your parallel port, most Toshiba computers remove the password when you boot it up if the loopback is fitted.

The device can be made out of any male DB25.

You should connect these pins: 1-5-10, 2-11, 3-17, 4-12, 6-16, 7-13, 8-14, 9-15, 18-25


I have built this device and keep it on the workbench where we rollout Toshiba Laptops.
Toshiba wanted $150 for another one so we just copied it.

For the models that don't have parallel ports we plug a port replicator in.

Other manufacturers use closely guarded Key disks that you boot from.



The days of cmos passwords are gone, especially with quality brands.
You will find that the flash password even locks the hard disk contents.
If the hard disk is fitted to another machine it still fails to work.
We have proven that the security chip is on the R/W head assembly, so even swapping the drive pcb doesn't work.

I am pretty sure IBM and Dell as well as HP use this security scheme as well.

hey z
are you sure the pinouts are correct?
You should connect these pins: 1-5-10, 2-11, 3-17, 4-12, 6-16, 7-13, 8-14, 9-15, 18-25?

ive got a laptop with a bios password i think, when i turn it on a white screen comes on with the previous owners details and asks for a password.

I just dont want to ruin it/the lpt port

[urban_s0ulja]

thanks z80
works a treat mate